


Atrast Nal Tunsha

by anotetofollow



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: AU: Mien'Harel, Angst, Deep Roads (Dragon Age), F/M, Grey Wardens, Legion of the Dead, MAJOR spoilers for All Souls Who Take Up The Sword, Pining, Tragic Romance, will also make next to no sense if you haven't read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24614026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotetofollow/pseuds/anotetofollow
Summary: [Little spin-off featuring characters fromAll Souls Who Take Up The Sword, with heavy spoilers]Lieutenant Kamien stitches another line into the Warden-Commander's story.
Relationships: Female Tabris (Dragon Age)/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Atrast Nal Tunsha

“Are you busy?”

Her voice is quiet, muffled a little by the canvas of the tent. Kamien shifts into the corner to make room.

“Not at all.”

The Commander pulls back the flap, getting to her knees as she crawls into the space. Dwarf-sized, too small for her. Her head brushes the ceiling as she settles herself cross-legged on the floor. She turns to him, wincing a little.

“You alright to stitch me up?”

“You get hit?” he asks, surprised. “Didn’t even see it.”

“The alpha, right at the end there. Cut clean through.”

“Let me at it, then.”

Kamien fishes around in his pack. Rags and alcohol, needle and gut. Not the most sophisticated supplies in the world, but for a quick patch-up it does the job. There are healers in her party, he knows, and knows also why she doesn’t go to them for anything less than a life-threatening injury. Her men look at her and see a hero, an indestructible warrior who took down an archdemon and lived to tell the tale. They don’t see the broken fingers that need splinting, the blistered tissue left by a genlock’s flaming arrow, the dislocated shoulder waiting to be popped hard back into its joint. Only he gets to see these things.

While Kamien prepares his materials Tabris unbuckles her breastplate, lays it in the corner, then pulls off her undershirt. She grits her teeth as the fabric peels away from a laceration running from the nape of her neck to her shoulder. Dark patches of corruption mottle the skin across her arms and back, disappearing under the wrapping around her chest. Kamien tries to recall whether they have grown in the months since he last stitched her up, but can’t be sure.

“Alright,” he says as she turns her back to him. “This is going to sting a little.”

He soaks a rag in alcohol and wipes it over the cut, cleaning half-congealed blood and rock dust away from the injury. Tabris doesn’t flinch, just sucks in a slow breath through her teeth.

“Nasty one,” Kamien says. “You’ll have a good scar after this.”

She laughs quietly. “One more for the collection.”

Kamien knows all about scars, how each one tells a story. He has enough of his own; a jagged line across his skull from a hurlock’s blade, a puckered knot of flesh in his gut from a rival carta member, two-dozen dents in his shins from his mother’s boot. The Commander’s skin is criss-crossed with scars, some raised and angry, some thin white lines barely visible in the low light, some broad swathes of abrasions long-healed. Half her face torn to pieces, one ear, one eye, her mouth forever curling upwards. If scars are stories then Tabris is an epic, a saga. There are more tales written on her body than buried in the Shaperate. She is beautiful. It makes her beautiful.

Kamien never asks her to share those stories, the ones carved into her flesh. They are hers to hold, to tell only if she desires. Sometimes she does. Every now and again she’ll point out some old wound and explain where it came from, describing foes that he can barely imagine. Not including his own people, Kamien has only fought the creatures that live in the roads. Crawlers and stalkers and darkspawn. Tabris has killed werewolves, demons, dragons. When he pictures the surface he sees it running red with blood.

She sits perfectly still while he threads gut through the needle and sews her up, trying to keep the stitches as small and neat as possible. They’re only a few days into the expedition and he knows that she’ll be up and fighting again tomorrow. Kamien has seen her battle through worse, in the years that they have known each other. She terrifies the grubs, when they first meet her. It’s good for them. Seeing an elf, and a woman to boot, facing the darkspawn without a shred of fear. It wounds whatever pride they have left. Once they’ve seen her fight they don’t run. They have to prove something to themselves, however pathetic that urge might be.

When he’s finished he slices the gut through with his dagger, wishing he had bandages to cover the wound. Tabris rolls her shoulders out, testing her flexibility.

“Here,” she says, turning back around to face him. She reaches into her pack and draws out a small stoppered vial, the liquid inside it a brown so dark it’s almost black.

Kamien feels his stomach sink. “Listen,” he says. “You know I—”

“Take it,” she says.

He hesitates. The Wardens know all number of secrets, one of which is the creation of this potion. It provides a degree of protection from the corruption the darkspawn carry — not much, but enough to keep him from getting sick every time he faces down the creatures. Enough that he’s lasted this long. It’s not a thing that’s made easily, he knows, and as gifts go it’s beyond valuable. But still it’s a source of tension between them, an argument that arises each time she brings him a measure. He is a member of the Legion of the Dead. He has said the words, taken the rites, been present at his own funeral. He is not supposed to run from death. Taking this draught is an offence to every oath he has ever sworn.

“Lieutenant,” Tabris says quietly. “If you don’t drink this now, I will force it down your throat myself.”

There is an edge to her voice, a coldness in her eye that tells him that she means it. He sees this shadow pass over her sometimes, watches how it tears and pushes at her mind. Saying no to the Commander when the darkness is on her is stupid at best, dangerous at worst. So he takes the vial and drinks, grimacing against the bitter taste. Tabris watches him like a hawk until the last drop is gone.

“I have something else for you,” she says, more gently.

Reaching into her satchel again, she hands him something round and soft, the colour of pink marble. A fruit of some kind, he’s sure, though he’s never seen anything like it.

“Surfacer merchant was selling them in the Commons.” She smiles, the expression almost childlike in its excitement. “I’ve not seen one for years. Try it.”

Kamien takes a bite, finds the flesh sweet and yielding. Pale juice spills over his fingers and down the slope of his wrist. He has never tasted anything like it before, but it reminds him of days spent slacking off work on rooftops, sleeping long in the mornings, the sound of a pipe drifting from some open window.

“Good, isn’t it?” Tabris says, her uninjured ear flickering.

“Shit. You can say that again.”

Kamien hands it to her for the next bite but she shakes her head, gesturing for him to keep it.

“Commander,” he says, carefully. “You need to eat. You’ve not touched a thing since we came down here.”

“Makes me sick to my stomach,” she says, shuddering. “I’m fine. You finish it.”

He doesn’t want to. He wants to share this with her, to know that the same taste lingers on their tongues, wants to kiss the places her lips have touched. But the mere mention of food has left her looking ill, so he doesn’t press the issue. He sucks every scrap from the hard pit and lays it to one side, hoping the scent of the fruit will not fade too swiftly.

Tabris lays down on her side, propping her head up with a hand. She is all bone and muscle, the plane of her stomach flat below the bindings. One of the braids holding her hair back from her face has come loose, strands of scarlet spilling over.

“Join the Wardens,” she says, apropos of nothing. Not a new request.

Kamien shifts over to lay on his back beside her. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” Tabris shrugs. “I’ve recruited from the Legion before.”

“Grubs and scouts,” he says. “I’ve got work to do. You know that.”

“It’s the same work.” She frowns, though there’s no anger in it. “You wouldn’t be at risk from the sickness. No more dragging recruits back and forth to Bownammar. I don’t see what the problem is.”

Kamien doesn’t know how to explain it to her. The Legion is a punishment, certainly, but it’s a privilege too. To be able to wipe the slate clean, to throw away every piece of who you were before. That was important to him. Giving it up to join the Wardens would make a mockery of that sacrifice, and of every comrade he had returned to the stone. There are some things that would be worth breaking his vows for. But not this.

Tabris lays her hand over his. It is so rare and sudden, this contact, that for a moment he loses his train of though.

“Think about it,” she says, her voice low. “Only a Grey Warden can kill an archdemon. Razikale and Lusacan remain in their prisons. Two of them, two of us. We could slay them before they ever reach the surface. End the Blights forever.”

She speaks in reverent tones, and Kamien cannot tell whether truly she means it. A wild, impossible ambition if she does. Tabris has told him before that the Wardens have maps showing the locations of the remaining Old Gods, though this is privileged information that her superiors never saw fit to share with her. A source of much bitterness.

“No one would ever know,” he says. “Even if we did.”

Tabris meets his eyes when she speaks. “As it should be,” she says. “There is no glory for the dead.”

Does she really think of such things? Has she imagined the two of them together, seeking out the last of the archdemons, bringing an end to it all? From the look on her face Kamien knows that she has. Her hand is tense on his, waiting for a response.

“It’s a pretty dream,” he says. “What’s got you thinking about this now, anyway?”

“Don’t tell me that you never think of how this ends,” she says. “Is it too much to hope that there could be some victory in it?”

“Of course not.” Kamien risks tightening his hand around her fingers. “I think about it all the time.”

“I thought there was a happy ending waiting for me once.” Her voice is small in her throat. “Slay the dragon, marry the prince. Foolish. Then I found out that wasn’t to be, and I thought I’d have a hero’s death instead. I lost that chance too.” She looks up at him, the expression on her face as close to helpless as he’s ever seen. “If I have to die a third time, I want it to matter.”

 _Let’s not die at all,_ he wants to say. _Let’s leave the world to clean up its own messes for once. I’m tired of dying in the dark. You've told me of the sun, the rain, the sky. I want to see it all, want to see everything before I go. I want to sleep with my head on your shoulder, Lorelei, haven’t we suffered enough?_

Kamien says none of this. Instead he nods, knowing that a flat refusal won’t placate her. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good enough for me.”

She lets go of his hand and crosses her arms behind her head. Tabris will sleep here tonight, he knows, as she sometimes does. When they wake he will check her stitches and then they will move on, to the next tunnel, the next battle, the next chance to die. Where she goes he will follow, as always. Perhaps for the last time, perhaps not.

Such things are not for the dead to decide.


End file.
